The Skrewt He Knows Not
by Right What Is Wrong
Summary: An ending to the Triwizard Tournament you have not seen before.


**Author's Note** : The Triwizard Tournament is a fun place for divergence.

* * *

As the Third Task began, three of four Champions entered the maze.

The fourth Summoned his broom, kicked off, and flew above it.

"Mr. Potter, I'm afraid that won't work," Ludo Bagman called up to him. "We already thought of that exploit -"

Harry fished stones out of his pocket and tossed them at the maze, whereupon they bounced off of invisible barriers. He tapped his wand to his throat, muttered " _Sonorus_ ", and called back, voice magically amplified, "Thanks. No offense; I had to check.

"However," he said, as Bagman was about to speak again, "you gave away its weakness already."

"I did?"

Harry gave an exaggerated nod so that everyone could see it, then sped to the center of the maze. "Yeah!" he shouted. "If the Champions can send up distress signals, magic can pass through it! _Accio Triwizard Cup_!"

Nothing happened. He frowned down at it. "Okay, you handled that," he admitted. "I guess you've spelled it against Summoning spells so no one in the maze could try that, either." He made several more attempts, including using Levitation Charms and attempting to Summon the pedestal on which the Cup stood, but nothing worked.

"Mr. Potter, you should _really_ enter the maze-" Bagman called out frantically.

"Oi, that was only my first plan!" Harry shouted back. "I've backups!"

And, flying over the maze, he soon found his target. " _Accio_ Blast-Ended Skrewt!"

Screams of horror came from the audience, but, as expected, it banged off the barrier and smashed into a hedge. However, it was so put out that it promptly blew a hole in the hedge - one through which it could fit.

And thus, through Levitation Charms and aborted Summoning Charms, a somewhat concussed Blast-Ended Skrewt found itself at the center of the maze, a smoking trail of blasted hedges left in its wake. That probably counted as animal cruelty, but, after his classes with the things, Harry couldn't feel too sorry for it. "You may be wondering what I'm doing," he called to the audience. "Well, I figure that the Cup may be protected from magic, but is it protected from physical collisions? Is its pedestal? And if they are - are they protected from high explosives?" Murmuring from the crowd. "And if _they_ are - what about the ground beneath them? If all else fails, I'll try to get the Skrewt to blast cup and pedestal loose and use it to batter them all the way to the entrance. Then I'll fly back and pick it up. And if you're wondering why I'm saying all this where the other Champions can overhear-" He shrugged, though the audience likely couldn't see from this distance. "If they're willing to charge a ten-foot Blast-Ended Skrewt to get the Cup, they've earned it."

He swished and flicked, and the beleaguered beast swung towards the Cup. It came into contact, and-

Suddenly, both Skrewt and Cup were gone. "Uh," he said, and stared at the spot where they had been. The blank pedestal seemed almost to stare back at him. "I think we have a problem," he announced, feeling very awkward indeed.

"What is it, Mr. Potter?" Bagman called out, his voice shaky. "D-do you need assistance? Can you still compete?"

"Oh, it's not me," Harry said, wondering at the curious concern for his welfare. "It's the Cup. It, um. Seems to be gone."

"YOU BLEW UP THE CUP, POTTER?" screamed Karkaroff. There must have been some sort of scuffle, for he shouted, "No, I will _not_ sit down! Dumbledore, your illegitimate Champion has BLOWN UP THE TRIWIZARD CUP!"

"I didn't blow up the Cup!" Harry shouted back. "The Skrewt's gone, too! It -" A thought struck him. "It looked like it might have been a Portkey!"

"It couldn't have been the Portkey effect, Potter!" Karkaroff screamed back. "The Cup was set to take the winner to stand in front of _us,_ and if that horrible abomination were standing in front of us, I ASSURE YOU, WE WOULD NOTICE!"

Harry stared down at the bare pedestal in silence. "Then what happened?" he finally asked.

* * *

He would not receive an answer until later that night.

The meager Wizarding community of Little Hangleton would report a horrifying, spell-resistant beast bursting out of the graveyard and terrorizing the town; only its seeming exhaustion prevented casualties, as the screaming wizards and Muggles alike were able to outrun its fearsome blasts. An Auror squad was immediately dispatched following the first terrified witch who Apparated to London, bolted into the Ministry, and notified the authorities; the Obliviators followed. Once the beast was Stunned and captured for further analysis, the Aurors ventured into the graveyard from which it had come and found a corpse mutiliated beyond recognition and something that, though burned, trampled, and half-melted, was horribly clinging to life.

They also found an overturned cauldron and a innocuous, puzzlingly out-of-place trophy. The rookie Auror who grabbed it found herself face-to-face with a bewildered crowd, three very puzzled Headmasters, the Minister, several other respectable-looking wizards, and a strangely-relieved Harry Potter. "Wotcher?" she ventured, tossing a confused glance at the cup she held.

An uproar soon followed, as the ordinary attempts of the British Ministry of Magic to cover up the unpleasant was overridden by the demands of the foreign Headmistress and Headmaster, backed by their Ministries, to find out how the Tournament had been sabotaged so badly it had nearly broken the Statute of Secrecy. The corpse, though unrecognizable by human eyes, was magically analyzed and matched to the supposedly-long-dead Peter Pettigrew; even more unfortunately for the long-believed version of events, the one patch of skin that had been impervious to the assault bore the Dark Mark.

The thing that had not died was examined, dragged off by Unspeakables for further examination, and verified as being, at the very least, a shard of the Dark Lord Voldemort; though Fudge tried to keep the information classified, the other Ministries were extremely unsympathetic after an event for _international_ unity had been sabotaged by _English_ internecine strife. It was soon given the Dementor's Kiss, which some viewed as euthanasia, given its current state. An operation that _did_ remain classified continued for some years after, ending in the destruction of a diadem which had possessed Hogwarts' newest Defense teacher. Oddly, the Defense position ceased its rapid turnover thereafter - much to the initial lamentation of some students, for Severus Snape had finally been permitted to change positions and would remain there for many more years, far better at teaching Defense than he ever had been at Potions.

The Skrewt remained in custody even after it had been identified, freshly rated as a Class XXXXX creature and causing a row after it was revealed that it had been born and bred at Hogwarts, with hapless students being forced to tend to the things. Hagrid would be arrested for good reason for once; heavy petitioning from highly-placed friends, including the Headmaster of Hogwarts and Headmistress of Beauxbatons, earned him some leniency in his sentencing, as he was judged too simple-minded to understand the gravity of his actions. He would be released, albeit under a decade of enforced house-arrest, and allowed to tend to _strictly-harmless_ magical creatures, but was monitored constantly in case he attempted to relapse into his old monstrosity-breeding ways. The Ban on Experimental Breeding was reviewed and tightened up, as obviously it was not effective enough if violations were being practiced at _Hogwarts_ with _students_ being forced to be accomplices to the crime.

The Skrewt itself somehow ended up being declared winner of the Triwizard Tournament and awarded an Order of Merlin, Second Class, for its part in thwarting the second rise of the Dark Lord Voldemort. It was widely rumored this had something to do with Karkaroff and Maxine absolutely refusing to see Harry Potter declared the victor when, after all, he had not actually gotten the Cup; as absolutely no betting pools had _ever_ included an option for a non-Champion "winning" the Tournament (save for the 42-to-1 odds some bookies had offered for all Champions dying to a single Task), the goblin bookies eventually settled on deeming Harry _essentially_ the winner and paying out accordingly. Meanwhile, the Skrewt was placed in a magical zoo, behind multiple layers of visually-transparent shielding, and would enjoy a peaceful half-decade of dining on live crocodiles before passing away in its sleep. Much to the fervent relief of its keepers, it never displayed a capacity for parthenogenic reproduction.

The young non-Champion's life was soon improved with the exoneration of his godfather (the survival of Peter Pettigrew for thirteen years longer than the official record forcing a reopening of his case), and, aside from being pulled aside by Unspeakables in his sixth year for emergency cranial surgery, the rest of his time at Hogwarts was uneventful. After graduation, he traveled abroad and found himself, through a series of unfortunate events and fortunate ingenuity, something of a freelance do-gooder, Curse-Breaker, and crime-fighter - a bit like the reputation Gilderoy Lockhart had once sought to build, but without the fakery.

All was well.

Not that everyone quite saw this at the time.

* * *

 _Coda: Nineteen Days Later_

* * *

"Albus, you've had enough to drink."

"You don't _understand_ , Aberforth," his brother said, tears cascading down into his beard and proving, once and for all, that the great Albus Dumbledore was a maudlin drunk. "All my years of planning... all my _effort_... and the power he knows not was a _Skrewt!_ " He let out a noise that might have been a hiccup or a sob. "A Blast-Ended Skrewt... I don't believe it... All that _work_..." He laid his face down on the bar, tear-reddened eyes wide and unseeing. "Hagrid wasn't even born in _July!_ " he screamed to the rafters.

Aberforth sighed. This was why no self-respecting barman left somebody unused to alcohol hang around after hours.


End file.
